It would be much easier if there was a SPAM button rather than the Flag/Report process. That way if enough people clicked the SPAM button such posts would be auto-deleted without the mods/admins having to do too much extra.

Siick26
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2013-06-07T09:13:16Z —
#2

Yeh this would be a good idea, i've seen a few threads this last few weeks with people blatently advertising services on their first post etc;. You could have a 5 report quota, so if 5 or more people report then auto delete.

siteguru
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2013-06-07T11:54:20Z —
#3

Exactly - although there may need to be a bit of trial and error to set the appropriate quota; a balance between considerate SPAM moderation and abuse of the process (people SPAM reporting posts they disagree with).

Another forum I frequent uses this mechanism.

PS - In case anyone is confused, my OP above was a reply to a SPAM post that has now been deleted.

Stevie_D
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2013-06-07T12:24:52Z —
#4

Thanks for the suggestions, and we appreciate your help in trying to keep the forums clear of spam, but knowing how things work "behind the scenes" I don't think that this would be a good plan for the forums. There are a few reasons why not.

It would be too open to abuse. Any member with a grudge, or a bot that got stuck on the wrong button, could easily cause a whole lot of damage.

Different people have different ideas of what counts as spam, advertising or legitimate linking. As a team of moderators, we have clear guidelines for what is what, and we can discuss among ourselves when we come across a borderline case. A small but significant minority of reports that we get are misguided, and we wouldn't want these to be able to directly impact on other members.

Any kind of automated system would be much more likely to miss things – eg, when we ban a user, we can go through and delete all other posts they have made (if necessary, which it isn't always), check if people have replied to the posts and quoted the links or advertising and delete that, and so on. The danger is that if we try to rely on automated systems too much that we don't pick up on these details either.

You may have noticed that we've had an increase in spam over the last couple of weeks. We are working hard at finding ways to stop it at source, prevent multiple registrations by bots – obviously I can't tell you how we're going to be doing that (mostly because it's complicated and I don't really understand that technical side of it myself :shifty:), but it is in hand – and improve the auto-moderation systems so that any spam goes into the mod queue for manual approval.

Please do continue to report spam using the red flag – we've got a strong team of moderators here, and we can usually deal with any reported posts, especially those that are obvious spam, very quickly.

Mittineague
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2013-06-07T17:11:30Z —
#5

I agree with Stevie D

We have a great team of Moderators and though you have seen SPAM posts, my bet is that what you have seen is only the tip of the ice berg, most being placed into moderation queue to await approval/deletion or being spotted and removed by a Moderator soon after it was posted.

There are rare times when few Moderators are here to investigate flagged posts, but I'm here a lot and in my experience there are usually enough here so much so that more than once more than one Moderator will be working on the same flagged post at the same time. A bit confusing, but in a good way.

So please don't hesitate to flag any SPAM posts - If it gets to be a zoo here please do feed the Moderators

SpikeZ
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2013-06-07T21:19:58Z —
#6

Certainly food for thought and discussion Ian :tup:

siteguru said:

PS - In case anyone is confused, my OP above was a reply to a SPAM post that has now been deleted.

Yes, you got orphaned so I moved you over here!

HAWK
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2013-06-10T00:13:25Z —
#7

Your idea certainly has merit - especially atm with spammers running so rife around the place.We're currently in the process of tightening the registration process which should put a stop to the issue, but if not - then something like this could certainly be taken into consideration as part of the wider strategy.

Webinsane
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2013-06-20T09:59:24Z —
#8

I am sorry that I have to be constant bug about Sitepoint forum features, but I love this community and I would like to enjoy it even more.

When can we expect forum upgrade? With VB5 rolling out as a huge disappointment. What is the next step for SP community? I am afraid that I might be using less of the Sitepoint because it is not satisfying my forum craving. Main issues:

Speed

Notification system needs extensive improvement

Search

Spam

I understand that you have been modifying the forum to suit your need, but I think it is time to make the next step forward.

Francky
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2013-07-12T20:17:34Z —
#9

Coming back to the SPAM/Flag/Report button:

In the Dutch forum Helpmij.nl (www.helpmij.nl/forum), which seems to use the same forum-software as SP, you can see the amount of reports as soon as you have clicked the flag:

This will be automated, but the new reporter can see how many times a post is already flagged, and can decide himself/herself to give another message or not. - In case of an obvious SPAM message, which is already reported, I don't feel the need to add another one.

In this way it is a double time saver: I don't have to report and the mods don't have to read too much.

Maybe this is also possible in the SP-system?

cpradio
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2013-07-12T22:29:05Z —
#10

Francky said:

Coming back to the SPAM/Flag/Report button:

In the Dutch forum Helpmij.nl (www.helpmij.nl/forum), which seems to use the same forum-software as SP, you can see the amount of reports as soon as you have clicked the flag:

This will be automated, but the new reporter can see how many times a post is already flagged, and can decide himself/herself to give another message or not. - In case of an obvious SPAM message, which is already reported, I don't feel the need to add another one.

In this way it is a double time saver: I don't have to report and the mods don't have to read too much.

I'm guessing that if it shows a sum then it's not just a simple one-liner or a text input somewhere.

Francky
—
2013-07-13T02:10:37Z —
#12

I've asked helpmij.nl if it's a feature of the newer version or an addon.Hope they'll find time to answer - will be reported!

HAWK
—
2013-07-14T20:44:40Z —
#13

Francky said:

I've asked helpmij.nl if it's a feature of the newer version or an addon.Hope they'll find time to answer - will be reported!

That's great, thanks! If it's a plugin I'll happily implement it. If it's a feature of the upgrade, then perhaps not. I don't see any pressing need to upgrade at present - it is a huge drain on resources for very little improvement.

Edit: I've been doing some thinking on this and I'll do some reading up on vB5. No promises of an upgrade, but I'll look at it.

Francky
—
2013-07-19T20:26:11Z —
#14

Sorry to be offtopic over here, but at this moment I don't know how to address the staff in an other way.

... but all indexes of the main forum topics don't show, f.i.:[LIST][*]http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?439-News-amp-Announcements (!),[*][[U]http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?9-General-Discussions[/U]](http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?9-General-Discussions)[*]...,[*][[U]http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?11-Forum-Support-amp-Feedback[/U]](http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?11-Forum-Support-amp-Feedback) (!),[*][[U]http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?434-Web-Content[/U]](http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?434-Web-Content),[*]and so on ...[*]Also all orange main directories (like http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?47-Community-Center don't work.[*]These pages don't have the Reply possibility.[/LIST]Coming from the forums homepage http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/, nothing to grab...The other forum summary page, http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forum.php, is reacting the same.[LIST][*]The links to deeper nested items are o.k., if you can get them (by mail).[*]The button "What's New" is working, and the submenu "Quick Links">"Today's Posts" too.[/LIST]

@HAWK; and @cpradio; I'm getting the same problem, the Test announcement has somehow screwed everything up.

cpradio
—
2013-07-20T02:27:24Z —
#16

Okay, I think it is gone. Can someone confirm?

Francky
—
2013-07-20T03:36:32Z —
#17

Hi cpradio,

Confirm! Great, everything is fine again, thanks very much.

On behalf of all Hello World people and all spying Aliens, Francky

HAWK
—
2013-07-21T20:32:36Z —
#18

Sorry guys - I was away for the weekend.If you need my help for this kind of thing urgently, email me. I always check emails every few hours but often don't check into the forums if I'm away for a weekend.